A Queer Migrant in the Irish Civil War

Did Irish republicans talk about sexuality during the revolution?

On Sunday 21 May, I will be speaking at the International Literature Festival Dublin as part of a live recording of the Bad Gays Podcast, hosted by Ben Miller, who co-hosts the regular podcast with Huw Lemmey.

It was easy to think of a ‘bad gay’ from Irish history to discuss:

I will be speaking about Chester A. Arthur III (1901-1972), Colorado-born astrologer, sexologist, bisexual, grandson of a US President and, during the 1920s, Dublin resident and supporter of the anti-Treaty IRA.

Chester A. Arthur III, who went by ‘Gavin Arthur’ from the 1930s onwards, is one of those historical figures that I couldn’t quite believe existed when I first encountered his story.

Arthur’s queer journey through the 20th century links together disparate people and moments that I never imagined would have a connecting figure.

He was acquainted with the likes of Eleanor Roosevelt, Paul Robeson and the posthumous YouTube philosophy sensation Alan Watts. He claimed to have slept with the early 20th century socialist and theorist of human sexuality Edward Carpenter, whom he was introduced to through the Irish communist Charlotte Despard.

He wrote poems about Irish republicans and developed an esoteric theory of human sexuality - all while living in a Dublin house that W. B. Yeats moved into when Arthur moved out. He dug trenches for republicans in Kerry during the Irish Civil War and founded a commune in the California sand dunes during the 1930s.

Arthur is surely the only writer whose ideas were published in both George Russell’s Irish Statesman and Hugh Hefner’s Playboy. And he is, to my knowledge, the only person whose death was noted in both the 1970s San Francisco gay press and the Irish local paper The Kerryman.

The queer grandson of 21st US president Chester A. Arthur sits on a horse outside a Kerry cottage “partially rebuilt after the ‘Tans destroyed it”, c. 1923. Library of Congress.

Arthur was guilty of auto-messianic thinking: he fervently believed that he and his circle were going to change the world. This ultimately unfulfilled belief was one pillar of his ego, which contributed to him becoming, by several accounts, a bad partner (he married three times, including a marriage to the Irish American lesbian and historian Esther Murphy) and an inveterate name-dropper in almost every single public utterance.

Some once lauded figures in the history of sexuality are now undergoing critical reassessments of their legacies, notably Magnus Hirschfeld, whose intellectual investment in eugenics has been analysed by Laurie Marhoefer in a recent study.

At the Bad Gays event later in May, I will note similarly that Arthur, though never well-known like Hirschfeld, must have his ideas about human sexuality assessed critically. They do not provide a model for the contemporary world.

Although I will outline this idea in more detail at the talk, expressing why Arthur is not someone who should be claimed as an uncomplicated queer figure of Irish revolutionary history, I am primarily interested in his story for another reason.

Arthur, who knew most of the major Anglophone writers on human sexuality of his era, met a cross-section of Irish republican society, from major politicians like Eamon de Valera to lesser known figures such as Ella Young and Kathleen O’Brennan.

Does it matter that prominent Irish republicans and the major sexologists of the 20th century had a mutual friend? Does it tell us anything about understandings of queer sexuality during the Irish revolution? In my contribution to the event, I will suggest that it does.

Chester A. Arthur III with IRA volunteer Mick Leahy, c. 1923. Library of Congress.

More broadly, I am working on an article that expands on this notion, using Arthur and other queer migrants and intellectuals who travelled through Ireland before, during and after the revolution to make the case that we can write what might be termed a social history of ideas about queer sexuality in early 20th century Ireland.

This will mark, I hope, an important departure. While historians have shown that queer sexuality was experienced in 19th century and early 20th century Ireland, I want to develop our understandings of how it was also discussed and conceptualised.

Forgive me if this sounds highly academic (it kind of is highly academic). But if you join me in Dublin on the evening of 21 May, I will try and convince you that it is also an important (and even entertaining) story to tell.

I am grateful to Joey Cain and Philip Longo, who have generously shared documents with me relating to Arthur’s time in Ireland.